My Favorite Tall Clothing Store

I was first introduced to it as a naive 17-year-old. I came to Chicago in my innocence and discovered the activity, the hustle-and-bustle of city life, and.....the Tall Girl shop. An actual store that I could go in and buy jeans that fit my long legs? What had I been missing all my life? I'd been subsisting on "tall" jeans from JCPenney and pants from the Long Elegant Legs catalog (which is also a great resource for tall women's clothing, but catalog shopping is too much of a hassle for me.) I remember that first night that I walked around the store in several different pairs of jeans just to get the sensation of wearing pants that dragged the ground.

I went home and got on the internet to discover the whereabouts of the rest of these precious stores. Unfortunately, they were only located in select cities in the North, such as Chicago, New York, Boston, Seattle. And I lived in Arkansas. Fortunately for me, my brother lived in Chicago, so every year for the next 8 years I would make my yearly pilgrimage up north to visit family and to shop at Tall Girl. There I would spend obscene amounts of money buying all the pairs of pants that I would wear until they wore out the next year and I made my next pilgrimage.

So I had a routine that served me well, and I didn't think things could get any better. Until a few months ago when a tall friend informed me that Tall Girl had opened up a new store in a totally new locale....none other than sunny Dallas, TX! Which is not 3 hours from where I live! All of a sudden a world of possibilities opened up. I imagined a world where I could go shopping anytime I wanted, without the obstacle of a $700 plane ticket. I daydreamed of taking weekend jaunts to the City to do a little shopping.

Well folks, the dream finally came true when I went to Dallas for New Year's. And I'm looking forward to many more happy shopping trips.

New Year's Resolutions

A fresh new year, new start, new resolutions......

I don't think I'm feeling the "fresh new year" vibe, because I didn't even remember yesterday that it was New Year's Eve. However, I do have a list of goals for the coming year. Now is as good a time as any to formalize them.

My New Year's Resolutions:
Learn yoga
Take a vacation to Hawaii
Learn piano-tuning
Eat healthier


What are yours?

At the Airport

I was flying home last week after visiting family for Christmas. Waiting in line to board the airplane, I asked about some information from a fellow passenger, who happened to be a tall young gentleman. He answered me with a much friendlier smile than the question warranted, and I could tell that he was obviously appreciative of seeing a female of his stature. He got in line behind me.

"Hi."
(Hi? hmm, he must be interested). "Hi."
"You know, you are very-"
"No, don't say it. Don't say it!" (I was feeling a little playful)
"....Beautiful. You thought I was going to say tall, didn't you?"

Ha! Not a bad pickup line actually, but I wasn't swooned.

Tall Girls with Short Hair

Woohoo, I got my hair cut....just in time for winter, hehe. It was short before, but now it is shorter.


The irony of it is that I adore long hair. I just love the images of young maidens with their long tresses blowing wildly about them in the breeze.....but the fact of the matter is that I look better with short hair. Every couple years I forget this fact and try to grow it out long, but then the sight of it shocks me back into reality. Oh well. On the plus side, it is a lot easier to manage. :)

Tall Equality

As a tall girl, people ask me all the time about my height. Apparently, it is very unusual for a female to be so tall. But what about tall guys? Is it unusual for them to be so tall too? Do they get all the questions like I do? I often wonder about this. My educated guess is that for guys of my height (6'3") people probably don't think anything of them being that tall. However, for extremely tall guys (6'8" and above) maybe it is a different story. Any tall guys out there feel free to weigh in on this.

At the Grocery Store

Today as I was exiting Walmart, an obnoxious lady noticed my height from the entryway where she was getting her cart. Even though I hadn’t even noticed her, she started talking to me as if we were in the middle of conversation.

“Well, look at you. You are damn tall.”
She was definitely not humble, she was rude. So I ignored her and kept walking.
“Hey! Excuse me!”
I continued to ignore her and walked on past and out of the sliding doors. I could hear her muttering behind me.
“Well, she’s too damn tall.”

The more I thought about this encounter, the more upset it made me. What had she expected me to do? She was the one who had called out to me in such rude fashion. No doubt if I had stopped to talk to her she would only have said more rude things. And what the heck did she mean that I was too damn tall? Like it’s something to be ashamed of? Like something’s wrong with me? Like it’s something I had any control over?

It took me a while to cool down from that one.

Renting a Video

I saw Wall-E in the theatre and loved it. I had an urge to watch it again this weekend, so today I went to the video store and grabbed the last copy. Lucky me! As I was reaching into my purse to find my credit card, the clerk asked somewhat timidly (or perhaps in awe),

"How tall are you?"
She sounded appropriately humble, so I decided to answer.
"6'2"
Sometimes I say 6'3". I like to vary it.
"I know what it's like to be tall." She didn't look tall to me. "I'm 5'9" and I remember the things the kids used to say about me back in school when I was taller than everyone else."
She sounded like she wanted me to commiserate with her, so I commiserated.
"Yeah, I know what that's like."

I shouldn't have said it though, because it's a lie. I never got made fun of in school for being tall, at least not to my face. I was known as the smart kid, or the bookworm, but never the tall kid. Oh, people recognized that I was somewhat above average in height, but I can't recall a single time anyone in school said anything negative about it.

However, I have heard this sentiment from several other tall women. A lot of them were talked about or made fun of in school for being tall. And honestly, probably also for being large, a logical side effect which sometimes comes with being so tall.

Do people really think that their height/size is something these women had control over? To anyone who ever did this, shame on you.